Building the F-22

I didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked during the process, mostly because it was with my phone (again… sorry… I’ll remember my camera soon!)

Took us a few hours to get the cradles stable and then to level the boat using a series of water-levels (tubes placed at correct points) and then verifying with laser-level.

Once that was done, holes were cut.  Here’s port-aft :

As you can see, we also decided to leave the extra bit above the mount to keep the aft section sturdy, but the blocking at the aft keel is taking all the load still.

Here are two exterior shots of the stbd and port forward mounts :

and last picture is the inside of the forward beam mount bulkhead :

All mounts are solid now with bog (decided to use cotton-fiber with cabosil even though it’s probably over-kill) and will be ready for us to remove the placement jigs, finish bogging and then start the laminating process.

I’d like to take a moment to thank Fred again; not only for showing up at 0800 Saturday morning to help me and dad spin the hull around and get upright, but also letting us utilize his wood-shop for an hour or so later that night when I had the motivation to start building the beam mount jigs and wanted accurate tools for the job.  Thanks!

The morning started out emptying the garage and dad and I were able to get the main hull spun around some on our own.  This is the last time we’re going to man-handle the hull like this, as once we start to fair the surface, there will be no more dragging things on the ground!

As you can see, the floor has become littered with epoxy drips and we’ll take a chisel to it again soon.

Of course, there are no pictures of this “fun” event either.  The three of us managed to turn everything with the help of the pulley in the ceiling.  The hull has put on some weight since the last time we manoeuvred it and the next time will take better blocks – considering the system we have was around $4 at Harbour Freight, I think we got our money’s worth…

Spent a little time cleaning up the fiberglass with the orbital sander and then took a short break.  With temperatures in the 104*F range outside, the garage has gotten quite warm to work in lately.

Decided to go ahead and cut the main hatch opening so getting in and out of the boat would be easier for the upcoming beam mount installation.

Opening feels huge now!  Much easier to get in and out of boat as well – seems bigger inside.

Looking aft out the opening – putting the box-fan bowing air inside the aft cabin creates a nice breeze under the crawlspace and into the main hull, plus it leaves the hatch free to move about.

Here are the compression pad former molds for the forward beam mounts

At the start of this, I made a vow to myself to not allow any wood to become a part of this vessel.  I think I’ve done a good job of that, except the few broken pieces of tooth-picks that might be in foam somewhere at the bow cap of a float…  Ian calls for the forward beam compression pads to be made from wood.  I asked him a number of months ago about this, and the option existed to make them out of solid fiberglass.  I started discussing the subject with dad again (partially because the temperatures are not nice to large bricks of fiberglass) and we came to an understanding…  He had some Oak stashed away – probably around 15-20 years old – from a now-closed lumber-yard on the east coast that he and his father salvaged.  Granddad was an incredible wood-worker; joinery that I would never even attempt to aspire creating on some of the most beautiful furniture ever to come out of a workshop.  Part of me wonders, if he were still alive, how much he might harass dad and I for building a boat out of these materials…  Of course, I know he’d be interested nonetheless…  Either way…  Here’s to you

(planed, squared and cut with real wood-working tools, too)

… and a coat of epoxy …

I thought that I took a picture of the beam mount jigs too, but apparently not.  I’ll make sure to do that next time.

The cradles are secure and stable now, the last of the extra lamination is done to the hull, and I’ve set up a water-level at the aft beam bulkheads.  All that’s left is to put a water level on the forward bulkheads, level the boat and cut some holes..

On a “sad” note, I had to retire my work-shoes after 2.5 years of faithful service.  They finally had so much epoxy on the top that the fabric was starting to crack instead of flex (the same with my work pants as well, actually) and the soles had enough epoxy that even after “sanding” them on some cobble-stones, they still caused me to slip.

Goodbye, old shoes…

Received a call Friday from the freight warehouse saying our crate arrived.  The catch is they closed at 5pm and are only open Monday-Friday.  With permission from work, I left a few hours early, met dad and went to the warehouse.  Within a matter of 10 minutes, we had the beams loaded in the back of my truck and were headed back to the house…  Of course, I took no pictures.  Rest assured, the crate fits easily into a small Nissan pick-up truck, and is carried by two people (all the aluminium folding hardware was in the box as well, so weight was approximately 98kilos – 200ish pounds)

Packaging was superb!

… this is the only picture I remembered to get before we took out everything to inventory and such

Workmanship and finish of the beams are simply amazing and we feel as though our money was well spent.

I’ll remember to take better pictures of everything the next time we start pulling the contents apart…

No pictures – left camera at home and forgot to snap a pic with my cell phone (ok, actually it was just too hot to stay in the garage long enough to take a picture)…  Temps have been in the low 100’s for the past 2 weeks, but we’ve (slowly) got a little done.  Well, we’ve been working slowly except where epoxy is involved…  Tried paint-rollers for the exterior of the main hull because of all the curves and found it a joy.  We were able to work in batches of around 2000 grams of epoxy in two paint trays without anything catching on fire, but if one doesn’t remove the roller after each batch it soon fizzles and becomes solid with the handle.  Just roll on until partially translucent and then use a plastic squeegy to finish the job.  Very impressed with how well it worked.

The main hull exterior is laminated with the exception of the bow, the aft “sugar scoop” area (top-side, which we’ll do after installing rudder web and other stern deck), and the final extra laminate at the port-side deck of frame 5.  The settes are 100% finished, and there are few remaining interior bits left to laminate (other side of DB web, web at aft of DB case, and “interior” of bow bulkhead space).  Plan next week is to glass the top portion of the bow bulkhead and bow top while still upside down, and sand the rough edges on the overlaps on the exterior.  Then Saturday at 0800 to lift the hull back up, set on cradles and secure to start getting level for beam mount installation.

Am very excited that with the exterior solid, the inside is now “safe” to walk, crawl, stand, jump in without hearing scary noises from un-laminated foam.  Time to start working out where we’re going to put electrics, head, etc.  I’m sure this means dad and I will start bickering in full force soon – but if he gets too crazy I can always tell him that it’s “not to plan” …

Our beams made it to Long Beach, CA last week and I’m waiting for an update to see if they’ve cleared customs and are on their way here via railway.

All for now… pictures next weekend!

It started out simple enough…   Do more rough-fairing and filling on the starboard side of the main hull…  Untill we made another pass and thought… ya know…  This is good enough to laminate…  And so the tale of this weekend starts…

First had to carry the new roll of A-spec fabric from the living room where it’s been safely sitting into the garage.  Not too difficult, only 100 lbs.  Then we rolled out a length of fabric, starting at the keel over-lap, and put a few Raptor staples to hold it.  Unrolled another full length after marking the over-lap and placed it on top, lapping over the gunwale.

So far, so good…  We were making good progress.  Earlier in the afternoon, I decided I wanted to try using paint rollers to apply resin for this portion since gravity would NOT be on our side.  We picked up some 1/4″ nap rollers (smallest we could find) and 2 roller-handles with extensions.  Turns out, this was a fabulous idea, as it was easy to quickly wet-out the top and sides, then squeegy excess resin out and get a good laminate.  What neither of us realized was that while I was working the squeegy and dad was mixing more epoxy, the two rollers we were using kicked quite hot and stuck to the paint trays.  This, in itself, would not be a problem, except they fused to the roller handles and rendered them useless.  Again, this wouldn’t be TOO much of a problem, except we hadn’t done the keel yet…

Try as we might, gravity hated us last night and the keel turned into a right mess.  You can see the (very slippery even when cured) droplets of epoxy on the garage floor showing our fruitless efforts to laminate the keel.  Took around 2.5 hours, including all the work trying to get the keel.  If we bought even one more paint roller handle I think it would have gone off wonderful.  Lesson learned for next side.

So… we’ll grind part of the keel and do it again…. but you know what would make it REAL easy to laminate the keel?  You guessed it… having the hull upside-down!

What follows is a few hours of sweat, cursing, pain, more cursing, a little more sweat, no passing out and a little more curing….

We put a nice 1/2″ eye-bolt into the rafter to use with a 4:1 tackle as a belay.  Tied off to the aft beam bulkhead and hoisted the hull up.  Fortunately, there are no pictures of this event and neither of us ended up in hospital   What I will say with regards to turning over the main hull of an F-22 (and no-doubt other designs) – there are TWO points of stability and the hull is very happy sitting on either of those two points until the cows come home.  It took more effort to get the hull to actually turn over far enough for the belay to actually pick up weight than the whole ordeal….  But we were left with this :

(shown after cleaning the driveway back up).  Oh, another thing that would help in the future… move the car first..

The good news, the port side looks to be in good shape and shouldn’t take too much sanding, we only damaged a small portion of the transom (mostly what gets cut out for the rudder anyway) and the inside now has good working room to get under the settes and the anchor well.

The hull has gained a few pounds since we last moved it… looking forward to rolling it a few more times once all the laminate is complete….